Gran Turismo PSP: a second opinion from a disgruntled fan

Five years is a long time to wait for a game, especially when it was supposed …

Now that Gran Turismo is widely available for the PSP, we decided that it was time to check in with our own racing super-fan to see what he thought of the game. You can read the original review to get started, and his thoughts are below.

Picture the scene: central Kentucky, about five years ago. A friendly neighborhood purveyor of games and game-related accessories (who may or may not now be a well known games editor at a likeable tech website) was all aflutter about a new handheld platform, the Sony PSP. "You should really get one. I know how much you love driving games, and Gran Turismo is just about to be released."

That was five years ago. The failure of Polyphony Digital to release anything on time (ever) reached its apogee with Gran Turismo Mobile, which reached legendary vapourware status until it finally surprised us all by actually being published. Five years in which my PSP sat around in a box not doing much. Five years in which I installed a custom firmware and tried playing GT2 as a placeholder (not worth the effort). Five years in which the existence of GT Mobile became a running joke.

But that was then and this is now. My PSP is no longer a paperweight, and after spending some serious hours getting reacquainted with the platform and the franchise, Ben asked me for a second opinion on GT Mobile, and I'm here to tell you that the news is good. Now, I'll admit it, I've been firmly in the Forza camp for a while now. The inability of PD to ship a game at anything close to resembling a deadline, along with Turn 10's superior tire physics model has swayed me, but playing GT Mobile is like getting reacquainted with an old friend and realizing what that friendship was based upon in the first place.

The graphics are great, and the inclusion of a cockpit view is most welcome. The tracks look at least as good as they did in GT4, which I guess at its heart this game is. There seems to be a slight motion blurring on your competitors' cars, and the occasional graphics glitch with the scenery, but nothing that prevents you from being able to pick out apices and braking points.

The lack of haptic feedback is jarring at first, but you soon get used to it, and if no rumble means a battery that lasts long enough to get bored of doing laps of the Nurburgring on a plane ride then it's fine with me. The cars tend to dive more under braking than I'd like, but I think that this is another of those GT/Forza differences.

I'm also a fan of the structure of the game. To be honest I'm glad there's no career mode. The point of a handheld is (in my eyes) to be there when you're at a loose end, out of the house, and you don't have a good book. Having to buy the cars you want to drive rather than having them all available probably serves as a way of maintaining a player's interest, as does the infrequent rotation of different marques through the car dealer screen.

About those cars—at first I thought maybe the game was a direct port of GT4 and had been signed off on back in 2004, with nothing newer than an '03 available for joyrides, but as the stock rotates, more recent models crop up from time to time. There are limited tuning options for the cars, and no upgrades, but to complain about that misses the point; if you want an in-depth career mode, play Forza (or keep waiting for GT5).

Was it worth the wait? Yes, definitely. If I'd not bought a PSP way back when and picked one up now with the game's launch, I might have made a terrible mistake and gone for the PSP Go. And I wouldn’t have had so much fun teasing that former game's pusher about the continued lack of a racing game. But most of all, there's now a credible driving game that means Suzuka or Trial Mountain or Le Mans are conveniently located in my backpack. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got five years of catching up to do…